Hello, it has been a while. As the fabulous Susan Christina, the creator of the Morning Call series available to all of us lucky TABB members says, “life has been lifey” and indeed for me life has been extra lifey of late. My very own bespoke “life being lifey list” has and continues to include: a husband who is unwell, news in the past few weeks that forementioned husband may not recover from his current pain flare up, a traumatic motor breakdown on the motorway on one of the darkest, loneliest nights, an ill teenager bothered with migraines, repeatedly having to cancel work commitments to deal with all of the above, caring for my 88 year old mother in law, an all-night visit to Limerick A&E with aforementioned son, trying to promote my burgeoning music career on social media (and failing miserably most of the time), a preplanned gig in London (and not really knowing I could go until the last minute), looking after our crazy collie Alfie and our cool cat Ace, the advertising and realisation of a fledgling initiative/project of mine that involves providing an alcohol free safe space for teenagers to gather and play music, working my usual Saturday job in a Creative Hub with teenagers, travelling and playing the aforementioned gig in London, and finally - the icing on the cake - dealing with a recurring painful knee problem which resulted in me having to be brought onto the aeroplane yesterday in Stansted in a wheelchair.

I have been in a permanent state of crisis now for at least 6 weeks. A gig in London several months ago had seemed like a great idea at the time but now I was not so sure. But I knew I needed a break; I knew last week that I was skating on the very thin ice with both my sanity and my sobriety. After meeting my husband’s doctor, a day before I was due to travel, adulting as best I could, I finally felt reassured enough to travel after setting things in place so my husband and son would have enough support while I was away. I worked on Saturday and with three hours to go before having to leave for my flight, I felt the panic rising again in my chest as I quickly packed.

Going away anywhere on any type of journey from the shops to the sun has always seemed attractive to me ever since I was a young teenager - so much so - that my mother the night before she died whispered to me when I tried to reassure her that I would move back home after she passed away to look after my father and my brother whispered “Claire, you’re like a gypsy, you’ll never settle down.”

I hate the packing though, always have done – this feeling is grounded in a trauma that involved leaving somewhere when I was very young, very quickly. Hence, I always leave packing until the last minute and end up with way too clothes in my suitcase. It is like I am preparing for never having to return home again. Indeed, packing for my honeymoon felt overwhelming and I remember my best friend and I drinking copious amounts of red wine before we drunkenly went through each potential outfit and she told me what to bring. I am sure you are familiar with the luggage allowance on Ryanair - a ten-kilo bag is all you can bring to avail of the cheap as chips flight. I needed to pack wisely and well.

I think speaking I may have too many clothes- my husband and son regular tell me this. The last time my sister-in-law was home she said, “I am saying this in a nice way, but I have never seen anyone with so many clothes.” I feel shame and a sense of cloth gluttony as they gather and collect like old ghosts of who I wanted to be on different days day on the floor or on the chair. For the gig in London, I had bought an outfit on my birthday with money gifted to me from my mother-in-law from a cool vintage shop in Galway. Unusually I had tried it on and loved it straight away, quickly got the thumbs up from my son, and the whole shopping activity was complete in ten minutes or less. Now normally it takes me half an hour at least to choose a pair of one hundred denier tights from the supermarket so you can imagine what a deviation this was from my usual clothes buying behaviour. The outfit itself consisted of a long black tiered accordion pleated skirt with a thin belt that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with. The skirt was slightly too long but I though “arragh sure it’ll be grand,” (more of this later) and I paired it with a randomly selected ruffled pinstripe granddad collar jacket with stud fastenings that I thought I could button up on the night.

Because of my fifty-five-year-old bunions, I elected not to wear my still-not-quite-worn in docs and instead brought with me a rarely worn pair of what my son calls my star trek boots, silver and blue with an orange stripe. Reassuring myself that anything else I needed I could buy there or borrow, I set off to the airport. As my husband and son drove away after dropping me off, my shoulders begin to drop for the first time in weeks. It was the first time I had been alone in an exceedingly long time apart from seconds or minutes snatched outside, on the beach with the dog, or driving. All my other usual self-regulatory non-negotiable acts of self-care have slowly and irritatingly had to cast aside to deal with dinners, a husband who needs more attention due to being sick, an anxious son, a nervous dog, the list goes on – you get my drift.

I had a chat with my sober friend the day before I was due to travel and before I knew it I had blurted it out, “I am afraid I will drink this weekend.” I stopped talking suddenly, barely finishing the sentence horrified of what had just come out of my mouth. It turns out that what I said - ‘my confession’ - was the best thing I could ever have said. In February next year, I will be 4 years off the drink, and I had no idea until I had the safe space with my friend that this was what I had been going to say, but this certainly was not it. I was horrified with myself, full of shame and embarrassment, but I persevered with the conversation. I told my friend exactly when and where I was afraid I would drink. Those flashpoints for me were waiting at the airport in Shannon on the way over to the UK, and directly after the gig. My friend reassured me that I had flown loads of times before since I had stopped drinking. She reassured me that I would be ok and that she would be available or there for me at any stage if I needed her. Like the way I have lived for the past few weeks, I hurriedly rushed in conversation onto the next flashpoint - that would potentially be after the gig. She asked me if it came down to the wire, could I tell my friend, who I was performing with, and asked me what the plan was for after the gig. I said I didn’t know, I presumed we would just go home.

In the end, my flight was delayed, but I was simply so glad to be on my own without anyone else to think or care about. I gloried in having the time to pick out a gift for S*, I sprayed (more than) a few perfumes onto my wrists (as usual I would end up boarding the plane smelling like a harlot), had a nice (very overpriced) coffee, took some fresh air (code for inhaling some nicotine), and eventually boarded the flight with the rest of the tired adult and child passengers. A storm had struck Ireland that afternoon and there was a wind warning in place for the whole country. In the end, we had had quite a calm flight except for a tiny bit of turbulence. We landed safely and just as the air steward went to open the door of the plane, a huge gust of wind blew it open. We cowered back as the air steward viewed the lake of water on the runway and tried to sort a safe disembark for all of us weary travellers.

I quickly found my bus without too much fuss and given the delay in the flight eventually arrived by Uber at my friend’s house at 1am. Bless her, S had had to stay awake to let me in and I mounted 5 flights of stairs to her very cool London flat. She made me an herbal tea and showed me to a very welcoming looking bed made up especially for me with cozy rugs and blankets in her music room.

The next morning was Sunday - gig day and unusually enough I did not feel the usual pre gig nerves. S and I agreed to take it handy – relax, chill talk, and rehearse a little bit.

This was a totally new pre-gig experience for me – I am normally very anxious before I perform and spend the days leading up to and the day of a gig or concert in a self-created state of feeling like as my mother used to say – a hen on a hot griddle. But I did feel different that day - calmer and more present. I gently sang through a couple of songs from my set every hour or so. S and I put the finishing touches to our set list, talked about life, love and everything in between and generally had a gorgeous, chilled afternoon. I did not know S terribly well. We had met at various song workshops over the years in the UK and a few months ago, I had had a little brainwave a few months and wondered if we were to combine forces, might we be able to get a few gigs. Tonight was the result. We were playing the Green Note in Camden town, an iconic venue for folk and emerging artists. This indeed was a dream come true for me.

During the sound check my nerves fell on top of me like several bricks of self-imposter syndrome combined with a “who the fuck do you think you are” familiar chant in my head. In hindsight, I recognise that sound checks are very intimidating – the sound engineer is intent on getting the sound right and you can end up sounding like an awful eejit singing the words one two on repeat, and bits of your songs that might need variance in how you use the mic. Why did I need validation from him? Why did I need him to look up and say how great my songs were? He didn’t by the way! My voice cracked - it does this thing when I am nervous and forget to breathe and I am not sure what happens technically, but it scares the bejesus out of me as I am always terrified that it will happen during a gig.

S could sense my nervousness and whispered to me in her gorgeous no-nonsense way “believe in yourself; you can do this, if you can’t as well go home.” I felt something slowly start to shift as if her words had given me permission to just be with it all.

S opened with her beautiful set of songs, and I joined her on flute for one of her numbers, messing the arrangement up of course. Then suddenly it was my turn. For some bizarre reason I suddenly felt relaxed. I whispered internally to myself connect connect, connect - and that’s what I did. I chatted about each song and told the story behind writing it. I realised after that having another TABBer there in the room gave me confidence and I did not feel alone as a non-drinking musician, I can sometimes feel very alone.

The gig flew by –and I almost took flight myself several times as I carefully negotiated the tiny stairwell and crooked steps with my too-long impulse bough skirt. I must have looked like a maiden from times gone by as I carefully stepped over mic stands and amplification wires and equipment with bunches of said skirt in my hand. I had my usual post gig banquet of two bananas and a mars bar stashed in my bag, but I did not really want any of those things. I needed some ‘fresh air,’ and I wanted to phone home. I needed to ground myself, but I also wanted to talk to the people who had come to the gig, I circled around and spoke to one man who had attended a gig of mine in Ireland before tonight. He had been drinking red wine steadily all evening. As I stood close to him talking, I could smell the wine on his breath and felt nauseous. How ironic I thought to myself – what was once the ultimate choice of beverage for me at home, at gigs, anywhere now smelt so disgusting.

When I finally got to my TABBer friend, she asked me if I would like a drink. I said yes please immediately putting aside the difficulty I had around letting her buy me a drink and not buying her one after she had travelled all this way to see me perform. She asked me what I would like to drink, I said very quickly that I would have whatever she was having herself. She arrived back from the bar with a lucky saint lager with a dash of lime. It made me immediately think of my mother - she used to drink lager and lime. I, as my son would say chugged the beer, thirsty and relieved that the gig was over.

And I did not drink. Not at the pizza party we had when we got home to celebrate the phenomenal evening we had both experienced, not the next day as I brought S for lunch to celebrate, not at the airport as I struggled with my knee (it turns out that walking up and down the several flights of stairs to my friend’s apartment to get some ‘fresh air’ each day is not good for it) and had to ask for a wheelchair to get to the aeroplane. And I did not drink, as I waited for my flight to take off and smelt the disgusting odour of stale vodka on the young man’s breath beside me. And I didn’t drink as I anxiously thought about all I had to face and do on my return, not when I met my lads at the airport and my shoulders sagged with relief at being back safely, not that night as I unpacked my case and re-met my domesticity in all its chaos. Not today lady not today.

I am recounting this tale not in any self-serving way. I neither wish to promote myself as a performer or want to appear to be gloating over the miracle that I did not take a drink. I am relating it here because I want you to know how easy it can be to fall off that proverbial wagon. And to try and explain that sometimes we do not even know what we are thinking until we have a mirror of a trusted friend to reflect back to us what really is the issue and what is going on inside ourselves.

My drinking career started in London at 17 years of age. I was completely alone, vulnerable and fending for myself. The liminal space that I have always occupied as the daughter of an Irish woman who married an English man has always affected me. It is only now in the sober light of these current chaotic days that I can start to gently examine and apologise to that seventeen-year-old girl and begin to understand the ‘strangeness’ I have always felt. It is only in hindsight that I realise that this gig in London was prime fodder for me the addict. It is only now I realise how lucky I am to have been saved. How fortunate I am that I had the foresight at the beginning of last weekend that ultimately enabled me to save myself from falling deeply back down into the bottle. I can prettify and dress it up however I want but at the end of the day, the words that perhaps strike the loudest are these – I was addicted to an addictive substance, and I accept this every day– over and over and over again.

As I write these last few words, I feel very humbled. A strange word to pick you might think, but I am. I am humbled by the part that connection and community play in keeping me sober when I really do not know my own mind. I am strengthened by the sense of being able to reach out anytime of the day or night to women in this TABB community for help, whenever and wherever I need it. The WhatsApp group is always awake, we as sober women are always awake and always prepared to reach a hand backwards but as I have illustrated forward too, to care and support each other as best as we possibly can. We are all in this together.

S* - to protect my friend’s identity.

from pathlib import Path html = r''' Find Your Best Starting Point

Find My Best Starting Point

Every woman's journey is different. Let's discover what will support you best.

Answer 8 simple questions and we'll recommend the TABB pathway that's the best fit for where you are right now.

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Question 1 of 8

1. Where are you right now on your alcohol-free journey?

A. I'm happily alcohol-free and want to stay that way. B. I've stopped recently but I'm finding it harder than I expected. C. I'm still drinking and know something needs to change. D. I'm not sure if I even want to stop yet—I just know I need to explore my relationship with alcohol.

2. What kind of support sounds most helpful?

A. Being part of a supportive community of women who understand. B. A structured programme I can work through in my own time. C. One-to-one conversations with someone who can guide me personally. D. A combination of structure and personal support.

3. Which statement sounds most like you?

A. I already know I want an alcohol-free life. B. I keep trying to stop but never seem to make it stick. C. I need help taking the very first step. D. I want someone to keep me accountable.

4. How important is connecting with other women?

A. It's exactly what I'm looking for. B. I'd like some connection alongside a course. C. I'm not sure yet. D. I'd rather keep things private.

5. What describes you best?

A. I often feel isolated or lonely. B. I feel overwhelmed and don't know where to start. C. I need structure to help me stay focused over time. D. I know what I need—I just want personalised support.

6. Which of these sounds most appealing?

A. Daily meetings and ongoing support from a community. B. A self-paced programme that I can complete around my life. C. Regular one-to-one coaching sessions. D. Daily check-ins with someone who's walked the same path.

7. If you could wave a magic wand, what would change?

A. I'd finally stop drinking. B. I'd stay stopped this time. C. I'd feel connected instead of doing this alone. D. I'd have someone helping me every step of the way.

8. Which best describes your personality?

A. I thrive in a supportive group. B. I like learning independently. C. I work best with one dedicated person supporting me. D. I like a mixture of independence and accountability.

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''' path = Path("/mnt/data/tabb_personalised_support_quiz_popup_close_only.html") path.write_text(html, encoding="utf-8") print(f"Created {path} with {len(html.splitlines())} lines")

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... before I knew it I had blurted it out, “I am afraid I will drink this weekend.” I stopped talking suddenly, barely finishing the sentence horrified of what had just come out of my mouth.

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